Hello all,

I thought it might be time to share more generally something I've been working on for a little while: snap packages for some of the core D projects.

For those who don't know, snap packages are a new format developed by Ubuntu to facilitate upstreams being able to provide the latest versions of their apps directly to users.  The format is also designed to provide effective confinement for apps, so that they can only access the parts of the host system that they need to.  While developed by Ubuntu, the format is gaining quite a bit of of cross-distro traction: see http://snapcraft.io/ for more information.

I started by trying to snap LDC, mainly because the cmake build system made for a very easy integration with the snapcraft package-build system.  The LDC developers have been kind enough to accept this as an official contribution, and a first submission is currently waiting for review in the Ubuntu snap store, based on the following package definition:
https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc2.snap

However, I have also created two other snap package definitions, one for DUB, and one (just this afternoon!) for DMD:
https://github.com/WebDrake/dub.snap/tree/classic-snap
https://github.com/WebDrake/dmd.snap/tree/classic-snap

As you can probably see from the package definitions, one of the attractions of the format is how remarkably easy it is to define a snap package.  People running Ubuntu 16.04 or later may like to try installing snapcraft and building these packages for themselves.

However, now that they exist, I'd like to try publishing these to the official snap store.  Rather than do this as some random developer, I'd quite like to publish them as official D language packages.  Note that the snap store supports multiple 'channels' with different levels of stability -- 'edge' and 'beta' being the testing ones -- so any issues with the packages can be worked through before a stable release is made.

The question is, (i) is this a welcome proposal? and (ii) if it is welcome, what do people see as the best way to go about this?

I would also welcome feedback on the current package definitions, which can be provided in the associated PRs:
https://github.com/WebDrake/dub.snap/pull/3
https://github.com/WebDrake/dmd.snap/pull/1

In creating the DUB snap package I also had to write a snapcraft plugin for DUB itself.  This would be good to submit upstream, but I'd like to get some feedback on it before doing so.  The plugin is in the `dub.py` file included in the PR above: it sufficies for the current purpose, but would need more work before it covered all potential use-cases.

Lastly, I have to mention that in creating the above packages, I received a great deal of very warm and welcoming support from the folks on the Snapcraft mailing list.  They were very eager to help me solve problems I encountered, and to help me find the most straightforward way to get the results I wanted out of these packages.

Anyway, hope this is interesting to everyone -- any thoughts, questions, feedback ... ?

Thanks & best wishes,

    -- Joe

On Sunday, 29 January 2017 at 20:07:50 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> The question is, (i) is this a welcome proposal? and (ii) if it is welcome, what do people see as the best way to go about this?

No comments? Well, there seems to be no downside (apart from the work).

So far, I considered Snap an Ubuntu-only initiative of yet-another-package-format. If it really gains cross-distro support, this is a great way for better D support on Fedora, Arch, etc. What is the evidence for cross-distro support? Can it be measured somehow?

Is it legally possible to distribute DMD this way? Afaik only dlang.org is allowed to distribute it publically due to the backend licence issue.

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 14:40:13 UTC, qznc wrote:
> No comments? Well, there seems to be no downside (apart from the work).

Yea, I'm a little sad to see the apparent lack of feedback/interest :-\  I had quite a lot of fun creating these packages and was hoping for a bit more curiosity.

> So far, I considered Snap an Ubuntu-only initiative of yet-another-package-format. If it really gains cross-distro support, this is a great way for better D support on Fedora, Arch, etc. What is the evidence for cross-distro support? Can it be measured somehow?

Snap packaging started as something Ubuntu were developing for their use-case, but started gaining cross-distro interest last year (probably because AFAICT its feature-set and simplicity of use is quite a bit ahead of alternatives like Flatpak).

Installation instructions for various distros:
http://snapcraft.io/docs/core/install

> Is it legally possible to distribute DMD this way? Afaik only dlang.org is allowed to distribute it publically due to the backend licence issue.

Yes, that's a very good point that I wanted to raise.  There is a legal agreement that you're asked to make with respect to usage and distribution of packages.  It looks like it ought to be compatible with constraints on DMD (re)distribution, but it would obviously need to be reviewed and agreed to by Walter.  This is one reason why if I do take this forward, I'd like to do so with some sort of official backing.

It doesn't stop me moving forward with DUB, of course, but it'd be nice to do that officially as well.

On 01/30/2017 09:40 AM, qznc wrote:
>
> Is it legally possible to distribute DMD this way? Afaik only dlang.org
> is allowed to distribute it publically due to the backend licence issue.

I don't understand where people keep getting that idea. It very clearly states that all you need is to ask permission. It's always been that way, and no reasonable request (or any at all to my knowledge) has ever been denied.

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 16:53:34 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Yea, I'm a little sad to see the apparent lack of feedback/interest :-\

I have interest, but as I've never heard of Snap before, I have no comments. Others may be in the same boat. Installation of D compilers is probably not an issue for most of us that read these messages.

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 19:28:58 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 16:53:34 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
>> Yea, I'm a little sad to see the apparent lack of feedback/interest :-\
>
> I have interest, but as I've never heard of Snap before, I have no comments. Others may be in the same boat. Installation of D compilers is probably not an issue for most of us that read these messages.

Same for me. It'd be great to have simpler and more widespread distribution of D and D built applications. But I don't have enough background to comment on Snap per se.

--Jon

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 19:07:03 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> I don't understand where people keep getting that idea. It very clearly states that all you need is to ask permission. It's always been that way, and no reasonable request (or any at all to my knowledge) has ever been denied.

Yea, I don't see there being any particular issue here beyond that permission needs to be sought and obtained.

In case it wasn't obvious, @Walter: I'm asking ;-)

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 23:47:50 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 19:07:03 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I don't understand where people keep getting that idea. It very clearly states that all you need is to ask permission. It's always been that way, and no reasonable request (or any at all to my knowledge) has ever been denied.
>
> Yea, I don't see there being any particular issue here beyond that permission needs to be sought and obtained.
>
> In case it wasn't obvious, @Walter: I'm asking ;-)

He can't read every forum thread, you should email him.  That's what I did when I got his permission to put dmd in FreeBSD ports.

On Tuesday, 31 January 2017 at 05:41:38 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> He can't read every forum thread, you should email him.  That's what I did when I got his permission to put dmd in FreeBSD ports.

Yes, I understand that, and I was going to do so anyway.  But I was interested in any case in some more general discussion/feedback.

On Monday, 30 January 2017 at 16:53:34 UTC, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Snap packaging started as something Ubuntu were developing for their use-case, but started gaining cross-distro interest last year (probably because AFAICT its feature-set and simplicity of use is quite a bit ahead of alternatives like Flatpak).

I just tried FlatPak and Snap. Snap is actually useable.

FlatPak might be superior technology with its sandboxing, but I'm no expert. FlatPak has no central repository, which makes it unuseable for the layman at the moment. It feels like the PPA situation in Ubuntu.

Snap has stuff like pulseaudio (audio daemon) or ogre (rendering engine) in the repo. That seems weird, because these are not applications. The first belongs into the base system, the second into a development environment.